Tuesday, November 8, 2011

My Attempt at a Mudroom.

After I was unable to convince my husband that our whole house needed re-organized, I went with plan B. I really wanted to buy closet organizing kits for all of our closets, but I decided that I would organize our things with what we already owned. We don't have the space for a main-floor mudroom, so I tried to re-create the concept in our coat closet.

Our house was built in 1955. It's roughly 1700 square feet on our main floor, so it's rather small. One of the many positives, though, is our great amount of storage space. Our hallway has a cleaning closet and two full-sized closets, one we use for a coat closet (the other cedar-lined closet is mine).

My lovely husband has many hobbies. Therefore, we need to store gear for kayaking, skiing, hunting, etc. Once we factor in all of the seasonal things we need to outfit a family of five for everyday living, it creates a lot of stuff.

Our coat closet used to look like this.

It wasn't bad - and we did have enough space for what we had, but it was impossible to find anything in that huge bin. Good luck to anyone trying to find a matching pair of gloves. Plus, it looked pretty ugly.

So, I utilized some upper cabinets that we had in our garage, and stole some baskets from the bathroom. Now we can easily find our boots, gloves (Rob has at least fifteen different pairs for various activities), hats, and scarves. I'm hoping to make this our seasonal area - switching warm weather gear (sunscreen, towels, goggles, etc.) for our cold-weather gear. It does look mildly better and it was the best I could do with what I already owned!